This originally appeared as a Twitter thread here

Keep Your Email Practices Clean

Recently I got added to an email list by a climate organization and I was incensed. It seemed, even to me, like it might be a petty annoyance, but thinking about it more and more I couldn’t help but reflect on how ethics affects our jewelry businesses in more ways than just sourcing gems and metals. Spammy email practices hurt us all for one enormous reason:

Trust.

Trust. Do people trust you when you sell their data? I dunno, ask Facebook. Do people trust you when you opt them into an email newsletter that they didn’t ask to be on? No. No they do not. And that’s what this organization did.

People Won’t Trust You if You Don’t Let Them Unsubscribe

This organization made it so that I couldn’t just tap the unsubscribe button at the bottom of their email. I had to re-enter it altogether to unsubscribe.

Trust takes time for a brand or even an organization to build – it doesn’t happen overnight. And it takes very little time to break it. In the case of this particular organization, it took seconds for me to learn that they were not to be trusted.

Don’t Purchase Lists, Don’t Sell Lists

I could tell, based on which email they sent this to, that they had purchased my email from another list. So that’s strike 1. Strike 2 – The footer of their email doesn’t mention how I got on their list, and it should. It always should. On mine, I have a simple explainer that you got on my list by signing up at a show, or by adding yourself via a form on my website, or by signing up for my eCourses.

And it is right by the easy unsubscribe button. No rerouting you to enter your email again. Like so:

This was all they had to do.

Explain How Subscribers Get Onto Your List

They made a choice not to explain at all how I wound up on their list.

Which brings me to strike 3 – the aforementioned inability to get off the list unless I wrote out my email address again to unsubscribe. This is strike 3 because it makes it seem like they are still collecting my email address for future use.

This may be an organization that my other values align with, but I wouldn’t want to work with them or fork over my money. Nope. Not even a little bit. They broke trust the second they sent that email. Actually, they broke trust the second that they purchased the list my email was on.

I’m singling them out because it was one of the more striking examples by hitting all of the worst notes, but they are by no means alone.

Because my business email is publicly available, I get added to email lists all the time without permission by stone vendors, influencers, by marketing agencies, by other jewelry vendors, by wedding expos and even by {name redacted} a well-known jewelry industry organization.

And it has to stop – these tactics are about as effective as those spam calls about your car’s extended warranty (I DON’T HAVE A FUCKING CAR) Please. I am begging businesses and organizations that do any of this to stop ruining email for the rest of us.

Because at the crux of all of this, spammy email practices make us distrust each other, and how is that helping any of us? Fin.

This sign up form below? You are not obligated at all to sign up for my list, but if you do, I can promise you actual useful jewelry business advice. I can also promise that if you ever get tired of my emails, all you have to do is hit unsubscribe. Easy peasy mac n’ cheesy.